


Hunters will be Hunters

by ParadoxPotentia



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), RWBY
Genre: (Does not actually fit at all), Arguably fits rwby canon, Dubious quality, Gen, If you don't know both canons the previous tag makes no sense, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Not seriously edited, Probably the first crossover of these two fandoms, Spiritual Crossover, What if hunters were hunters, author chose not to use character tags, mistic?, not actually trying to use more words in the tags than in the story., optimistic?, pessimistic?, please point out flaws in detail, this is why we have weird things, we don't need two iterations of this abomination, why is this a crossover?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 00:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxPotentia/pseuds/ParadoxPotentia
Summary: The truly horrifying part of being a Hunter is this- the Grim are eternal. At least, that’s the first thing most hunters believe is horrifying.They’re wrong. There are worse things than the Grim, out where humanity fails and mankind desperately fights to survive.Drinking the old blood is folly beyond compare. But there are still more dangerous things, abet not stupider.





	Hunters will be Hunters

The truly horrifying part of being a Hunter is this- the Grim are eternal. At least, that’s the first thing most hunters believe is horrifying.

They’re wrong. There are worse things than the Grim, out where humanity fails and mankind desperately fights to survive. Drinking the old blood is folly beyond compare. But there are still more dangerous things, abet not stupider.

Don’t look at the best Hunters while they battle- for a civilian like you, it could shred your sanity. You’d survive- oh, you’d survive- but you might possess a semblance of something higher, and more dangerous.

The neverending onslaught of the grim is a mercy. You don’t have to see the few, the hunters who lost themselves to it. Many fight the grim to this day, a mad frenzy they don’t quite control. Ignore the war between the two children of the old blood, unraised and savage. If you flee, you may die. If you fight, worse things than that will happen.

There are things behind the skull of every hunter- they cannot go a day without taking a life. No hunter can- not a girl of eight, nor the eldest huntsman. The fact that those lives are not human does not change the decay killing them causes. Seal four hunters in a room together for a week. No matter how strong their bonds, when you open the doors you will find something no longer human, and far worse than a grim.

It’s easy to mistake hunter spawn for grim- and in a way they are- but grim serve only one master, and her killing of humanity is a mercy, a quarantine. It is not meant as one, but if intent were all that mattered the world would be a very different place. The things hunters call up when lost in the depths of their semblance are far worse.

Would that we could end the flow of hunters, but there is no way- not without slaying humanity itself, or the ancient blood that stands beside them and teaches them to hunt.   
The gifts of the gods are no less a curse. Thank the destroyer, for she is what stands between humanity and the hunters. Curse the destroyer, for she is half of an equation that makes life a choice between abomination and death.

If- no, when- a hunter rises above their base nature; run. The things that they were once a Semblance of may mean you no ill- but they do not understand humanity anymore, and barely understand hunters. That- no, shortly before then- is when the grim come. They would kill all in the city, but that is still a mercy compared to having your true nature ripped out of your soul and forced upon you. 

Even if you become one, be wary of others, and of yourself.

\----

Don’t think that the world is a worse place for the hunters. It is not. They at least try to put humanity first. Of the seven manifestations of the old blood that approach their true nature, four are sound asleep, and imprisoned. One walks among humanity as one of the hunters, and is unaware that he is dreaming, but his mark sires spawn despite this. The last that lives is queen of the grim, and no human has looked at her and lived. 

Hunters merely cannot comprehend we would like to remain as we are. The others know, and only care about us as a spawning pool for hunters- save for the queen of the grim, who would slay all things, and then be slain in turn. 

It is because of Hunters that humanity lives. It is because of the Hunters that humanity remains, half dead and half living. It is because of hunters that the world remains balanced on the tip of a knife; that we have neither ascended to become something we never wanted to be, nor been slain and left to rot for our rejection.

Do not mourn them. They seek to escape the shackles of humanity, and all do. But do not seek them out. They would force you to do the same, and you would not grow smoothly into the role as they do. They do not grasp how far they have grown, or how much you do not wish to follow them. They do not realize they force their fate upon us as they walk among us, nor the slow growth that blossoms from their curse spreading.

Someday, humanity will consider it a blessing, all of us. Someday, the plague of the grim will be akin to a plague of corn. Someday, we shall have nothing to fear from the Destroyer, save what I fear from my sister. I hope to not see that day. I pray that it will not be forced upon any who do not choose it. 

Someday humanity will treat with the six who came here as equals, and not as slaves, nor pawns, nor children. I hope to never be part of that, but that knowledge fills me with hope for the hunters- they are not damned, they are saved from a fate that I desire and they do not. There are no wrong choices, there are no right choices. There are just choices.

Sleep, children of the kings above. Sleep, and do not dream. That is humanity’s gift to you.

\---

Daughters of the greatest merchant of skin. You may have been told the skin of the gods came from the bowels of the earth. This is true, but it is a lie. A fraction- a fraction that grows smaller every day- comes from the corpse of something far greater than us, the only victim of the Destroyer to remain deceased, buried in the dirt of a world. The rest comes from a far more toxic source.

The devices of this world are powered by the skin of your own kind. Not your brother’s kind, only yours. I will not- cannot- bemoan your folly in choosing this fate. I have made my mistakes in the name of ambition, and your ambitions are kinder than mine. They are no less dangerous for anyone, but they are kinder. Still, know this. We are only persisting by the skin of our- no, your skin in specific. You and your kind.

In life, I have tortured ten thousand of my kind, a thousand of yours, and taught dozens how to do the same. In death, I am certain that none of them will be above vengeance, though perhaps they might feel oblivion is the fairest requital of them all. 

I am glad that you do not dirty your hands with blood, though I will never confess this truth. I lied- your hands are soaked with blood. Not a drop of it innocent, but a fountain of those who deserve it. Your path is filled with pain, and I cannot say it is less pain than my own. I can- I must- confess it is less justified for you to suffer than for a skinflint such as myself. 

I hope you win, I hope you fulfill your destiny, though I have no skin in the game myself. My future is the same should you triumph or fall. I have no doubt of that. I have relied on other people’s pain to build my own pleasure for too long, and while I might lie and claim it was for the good of humanity, it was never for that purpose.

If it were, I would be there. It would be skin off my back, not skin off theirs. 

I am glad you do not seek to profit from their suffering, even if you cannot see it. You may have dirtied your hands with blood, but that is the only grime on them. You have not done what I have done, not seen the horror of the skin we call Dust. 

I forget this, when I am not alone. There are horrors humanity is not meant to hold, and when it is strengthened by our own guilt in those horrors- we must go mad, or else drown the memory in our own vices. I must apologize, both for what I have done to your kin, and for what I will do to them. I cannot stop, that is the horror.

Though my hands are covered in profit from another’s pain, there is no way for us to survive without it. That’s never why I choose to do it, but it is always why I don’t kill myself when I remember the true scope of my sin.

I could play the martyr, but the truth is- I am, and will always be, responsible for what I have done. 

Forgive me, or don’t. It’s no skin off my back.


End file.
